The Market stays irrational.

We still get daily calls about whether we sell or buy sports cards. We haven't done that for...let's see...about 20 years. I guess once the info is online for doing something you're online forever. 

My experience with sports cards was so unpleasant that you'd have to shoot me--and the behavior of some of the people who call only reinforces that feeling. ("What are they worth?" I don't know, sir. I haven't done it for twenty years...."Then where to I sell them?" I really don't know, like I said..."Who is selling them?" Uh, how do I say this, I HAVEN'T DONE IT FOR TWENTY YEARS! "Well, you don't have to be an asshole.")

Anyway, even before I quit sports cards much of the chatter about the industry was foreign to me--but I still could understand most of what they were talking about. Then a few years later, it was all completely Greek to me. I had no more idea what's happening to sports cards than I would, say, a diesel engine manufacturer. Not a friggin' clue.

Also about 20 years ago we shifted to a "reading" model of comic store. That is, once the speculators washed out of the comic industry, we still had a core group of customers who were readers, who bought comics because they enjoyed the stories and art. So we catered to readers--carrying graphic novels was one good way to do that, especially as back issue sales declined. 

But comic readers were never enough to completely keep us in business, either before the speculative boom of the mid-90s (thus, us carrying sports cards) or after the bust (thus us carrying Magic, board games, toys.)

Then, about five years ago the market started to shift again. There was still the core group of reading customers--but the industry started catering more and more to speculators, until today--I'm starting to get the same feeling of not understanding what the industry is doing anymore. 

I decided to shift even more decisively toward new books and games, and that turns out to have been a good decision. We are doing better than ever, overall.

But the comic biz is going through a huge amount of turmoil right now. No one knows what's going to happen. The Big Two--DC and Marvel--have moved to new distributors, which puts everyone else in jeopardy, increasing the time, money, and energy we have to devote to ordering and receiving weekly shipments.

In the meantime, much of the chatter is about the speculative value of comics for which I care not one fig. It's rather dismaying to read my fellow comic retailers talking about ratios of incentives for special covers, variants of comics that have nothing to do with the contents, errors on the cover, and outrageous pricing online for comics that came out yesterday. We've done this before and it didn't turn out well. But I get the distinct impression I'm in the minority.

As John Maynard Keynes said about the stock market: "The stock market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

As I said, we are doing amazingly well, so I can watch this process with a certain distance, shaking my head, and hoping everyone comes to their senses. It's a very weird feeling to do something for 40 years and realize the market has completely shifted. 

And to be making more money than ever. Weird.